Development
is an ever growing process and its impact is often detrimental to environment
which in turn may lead to adverse consequences for human life. Environment
Impact Assessment (EIA) is an anticipatory and participatory environment
management tool which helps in the decision-making process for different
upcoming development projects by analyzing the environmental consequences of
the action. The large scale projects like setting up of Special Investment
Regions (SIR), Special Economic Zones (SEZ) and Industrial Estates (IE) have
cumulative impacts on the environmental condition of the region. This paper
intends to describe different practices of impact assessment and seeks to
direct this debate towards the potential benefits of applying Regional EIA over
the project specific EIA to capture the cumulative impact of large development
projects like SIRs and IE on the environmental condition of the region and
underline the challenges often faced during the study. Regional EIA is a new
concept in India and the process of development of an SIR is different from the
other industrial projects such as SEZ or IE. Unlike SEZ which comprises of only
industrial activity, SIR also includes residential commercial and other amenities
over an area of more than 100 square kilometers. Further, the implementation of
Regional EIA in Indian context is also constrained by problem in baseline data
collection and lack of exhaustive ecological and socioeconomic indicators for
impact assessment and restricted use of state of art technologies such as
Geographical Information System due to many factors such as cost involved and
lack of awareness among consultants. The whole process of Regional EIA should
be made rapid and more participatory.